The definition of a moron is "a stupid person." Yet on his own blog SteveP mocks what he calls the "Smashed Together and Uniting Planets Indurately Doctrine" or, as he abbreviates it, "STUPID."

According to SteveP, the "STUPID" doctrine offers a false explanation for the existence of fossils that are millions of years old on an earth that is only a few thousand years old. In spite of things like data and evidence, therefore, the "stupid" doctrine facilitates not believing evolution.

The problem, of course, is that the "stupid" doctrine was taught by Joseph Smith. So I'm wondering, does that make Joseph Smith "stupid"?

Twelve years ago, BYU Studies editor John Welch said nineteenth-century LDS writers had "commonly suggested before 1929 that this earth was created from pieces of other worlds recycled by God in organizing this planet. Under that theory, evidence in the rock record of prehistoric life did not imply that death had occurred on this sphere before the fall of Adam and Eve." (In the introduction to B. H. Roberts, The Truth, The Way, The Life, 2nd edition, Provo: BYU Studies, 1996, xiii-xiv; italics in the original.)